Edwin Herdman

Looking at the text ronderick posted...it looks like somebody just made this up.

But if I were to assume it's real...which it isn't:

The specs seem like what I'd expect actually, though the non-100% viewfinder surprises me. I guess it'll still be larger than the 7D's however.

AF doesn't quite seem sports-spec but better than any APS-C DSLR from Canon out at the moment. Metering looks like a big advance with nearly double the number of zones.

DIGIC V isn't proven to exist yet. It might by the time the camera is released, but the whole "Digic IV is a temporary solution" argument was always based in rumor, not fact.

Video framerate selection still seem lousy. 60FPS 1080p maybe is illogical to hope for given the speed of current media, although half-speed SDXC cards can swing 1080p@30fps. Just as important to me is the speed for 720p, which ideally will have 24fps this time...but I'm not holding my breath.

spam

Dual Digic 4 processors but still 6 fps. What is it that requires another DIGIC processor now?

28MP and 6 fps would require 2 digic IV for processing unless the processing speed is increased quite a bit compared to the 7D.

The whole rumor seem more like a wish list though. 6 fps and 7D quality AF would make it were hard to sell the 1D Mk IV, and specs for a camera with a release date almost a year from now wouldn't be fixed for some time yet.

Very, very plausible specs - if the 5DIII is scheduled for a Feb 2011 release. In fact, I was expecting a 5DIII with these spec to be announced at Photokina this year.

The big question, though, is when is the 1DV going to be announced? It is a possibility that this could happen in Feb 2011, in which case the 5DIII most likely won't be announced in 2011 at all - and won't have these specs either.

CR guy, please ask around for Canonâ€™s plans about the 1DV. This will tell us a lot about the 5DIII, 7DII, et..

x-vision, you seem to be very convinced a 1DV is on the way ... I'm curious as to why you believe this to be the case. most evidence as I understand it points to a totally different conclusion.

first, the 1D Mark IV was released 1Q 2010. for canon to replace it with a 1D Mark V in 1Q 2011 would be a 1 year refresh cycle ... unheard of in professional cameras. for good reasons, too, having to do with recouping R+D and production costs.

second, there is nothing horridly wrong with the 1D Mark IV that warrants emergency replacement. one could argue the closest any camera came to warranting this sort of drastic measure would be the 1D Mark III, yet Canon stalwartly stood by that product for the duration of its lifespan. from what I've seen, the 1DIV performs pretty much like everyone expected it to, which is to say in fine fashion.

so ... just struggling to understand where this is coming from. also, when you make comments like this on other posts:

"Aah. Somebody's been wet-dreaming again. Pixel-binning and weak/missing AA filter are technical characteristics that have no appeal for real photographers - just for the techno geeks that came up with this lame rumor."

and then come out with a statement about expecting the 1DV to materialize at Photokina this past year ... people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, you know?

The 1DIV may look like a new model but in fact is a mid-cycle facelift product. As such, its lifespan will be short. The 1DIIn, for example, was on the market for less than 18 months. The 1DIV is a more substantial facelift than the 1DIIn was but itâ€™s still a facelift.

Also, even though the 1DIV is well specâ€™d, its 1.3x sensor format is a drag and is working against Canon at this time. Individual buyers may prefer the 1.3x format for the extra â€˜reachâ€™ but having a smaller (read â€˜inferiorâ€™) sensor than the competition - at the flagship level - is a marketing suicide. A switch to FF needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Thus, the camera that needs a replacement the most at this time is the 1DIV â€“ not the well selling 5DII or 1DsIII (at its new $6K price point).

As for the AA filter and pixel-binning: like I said, these are low-level technical characteristics, not selling points. No company will delay a flagship product for characteristics that many buyers have not heard of or donâ€™t understand.

P.S. Sorry for the â€˜real photographersâ€™ comment. I meant to say people buying/using cameras for taking pictures â€“ as opposed to the people buying cameras as just toys and obsessing over their technical specs.

The specs seem like what I'd expect actually, though the non-100% viewfinder surprises me. I guess it'll still be larger than the 7D's however.

Yes, I wonder about this as well, in general. Why aren't all view finders 100%? 98% seems so close to 100%, what makes the last 2% so hard? In contrast, I don't find the magnification factor as important. Sure, with a higher magnification you are probably able to discern more detail, but for composition it's a bit tiring on the eye to roll around too much to cover all corners of a magnified frame (for FF, for APS-C it's no issue).

The 1DIV may look like a new model but in fact is a mid-cycle facelift product. As such, its lifespan will be short. The 1DIIn, for example, was on the market for less than 18 months. The 1DIV is a more substantial facelift than the 1DIIn was but itâ€™s still a facelift.

Plausible, but consider the economic climate as well.

Also not sure where the Mark IV could make massive improvements, unless you want to turn it into a movie camera. It could use some more megapixels perhaps.

One of the biggest changes from the Mark II to the IIN was the back color LCD, changed from 2" to 2.5", a pretty noteworthy change. Right now it's standardized at 3" on most models. I'm sure some people would like to see a bigger screen still, and there may be some room before we run into problems like trying to make it a touchscreen to accommodate all the controls as well.

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Also, even though the 1DIV is well specâ€™d, its 1.3x sensor format is a drag and is working against Canon at this time.

You dismiss the whole sports segment as "individual buyers?"

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As for the AA filter and pixel-binning: like I said, these are low-level technical characteristics, not selling points. No company will delay a flagship product for characteristics that many buyers have not heard of or donâ€™t understand.

Canon is a smart enough company - I would hope, else they are putting themselves in peril - not to ignore the AA filter. I assume you mean getting rid of the AA filter? Not smart. I'm sure there will be an AA filter developed specifically for the sensor used, as always), or fudging pixel-binning for video if other manufacturers can do it (considering how much data would need to be moved, while sensors continue to get denser in terms of megapixel, I don't see anybody catching up for the sake of pixel binning in video. Perhaps I'm not sure what you meant here, but AA filter and pixel binning perhaps aren't high on the list of photographer demands because they're relatively transparent to normal photographers and the demands of cranks uninvolved with camera development but who have concrete opinions about "best practice" haven't been reflected in Canon or Nikon camera development. If you want my opinion on what Canon really ought to do to make their cameras better, I would start with (for the low end) better quick selection of bracketing (have to dive into a menu on the T1i, though it's only a few seconds to do) and especially getting a better mirror lock up solution.

Not true, actually. The 7D viewfinder coverage is "Approximately 100%" - exactly the same coverage spec as the 1DsIII and 1DIV. The 7D is also 1x magnification, but of course that's easier because it's APS-C.

If it were to be 19 + 7 = 26, ok, but where do the extra 2 sensors go?

Given this, I'm willing to call this whole thing bogus as it suggests an AF system with fewer active sensors than is currently found in the 5D Mark2.

The person who fabricated these 5DIII specs seems to be stating 26 AF points total. I'd read the "5" as referring to the number of AF point selection modes (presumably taken from the 7D specs - auto, zone, manual, spot, and point expansion).

I'm not sure how they came up with 26, though...maybe they are not counting the 'double cross center' in the 19 cross points, so it's 1 double cross center + 19 other cross type + 6 linear (the same 'invisible' six the 5D and 5DII have)??